{"id":419704,"date":"2026-01-19T18:00:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T18:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/419704\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T18:00:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T18:00:13","slug":"excited-is-an-understatement-whitecloud-ready-to-join-flames","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/419704\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Excited is an understatement&#8217;: Whitecloud ready to join Flames"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/hockey\/nhl\/players\/zach-whitecloud\/b424c4e8-31d3-4155-b6af-319000735e1b\" class=\"sn-player-post-link\" target=\"_self\" data-player=\"b424c4e8-31d3-4155-b6af-319000735e1b\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Zach Whitecloud<\/a> spent all eight of his NHL seasons with the Vegas Golden Knights, but the 29-year-old is excited to return north of the border. <\/p>\n<p>Despite the day being a whirlwind for him, Whitecloud is eager to join the group on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cExcited is an understatement,\u201d he said. \u201cGrowing up in Manitoba, I watched the Flames, Leafs, Oilers and Canucks and all those teams, and I never envisioned myself playing in the NHL for one.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cReally excited to join the group there and play in an atmosphere where hockey is No. 1.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Calgary currently sits near the bottom of the Pacific Division with 46 points, but the right-handed defenceman believes the team is going in the right direction and he\u2019s looking forward to making an impact.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The team has been playing well. I think they have a lot of guys in place that have had really good careers, really good goaltending, good D corps, good forward groups, and playing in that atmosphere; it\u2019s always a tough building to come in and play in Calgary throughout my career.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m excited to be part of that now and make Calgary a continued spot where it\u2019s difficult to come in and play and keep trying to push forward a winning tradition here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Whitecloud&#8217;s next chance to make his debut for the Flames will be on Monday when Calgary hosts the New Jersey Devils (Sportsnet, Sportsnet+, 9 p.m. ET \/ 7 p.m. MT).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zach Whitecloud spent all eight of his NHL seasons with the Vegas Golden Knights, but the 29-year-old is&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419705,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-419704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}